Doing the math

For about the past six months Little A can't eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed, or ride in the car without asking BB or myself to "Tell me math". Having not quite mastered the syntax differences between "asking" and "telling", one might think he's asking us to explain the square root of an isosceles triangle or verbally solve a quadratic equation. What he REALLY wants is someone to ask him some math questions. So we started off with the basics like, "What's 2+1?" or "If you have three apples and give two to Big E, how many are left?".

DISCLAIMER:
I NOT am one of THOSE parents who think ONLY their children are brilliant and special and surely no one else's children can compare. Piddlecock! I recognize that ALL our children ARE brilliant and special. I really don't want to come off like one of those people who laments the challenges of having too much money and how hard it is to find decent help and how people just don't realize the horrific trouble caused by all their good fortune. Poor souls all, but do we really have to hear about their tragic tribulations?

But this math thing has really started to surprise me. Mild surprises at first then growing in magnitude on the Bubble Girl Surprise'o'Meter. BB and I catch ourselves looking at each other with questioning eyes whether Little A really just answered 25 x 4 is definitely 100 and then extrapolated, unprompted, that since 25 x 4 was 100, then 25 x 8 must be 200 and 25 x 12 must be 300, and so on. That's all great but when I ask him to count how many letters are in his name? You'd think I was asking him for a geometric proof about parallel lines.

I'm happy for him to have a grasp of The Mysterious Mathematical because I know this is most definitely NOT from my genetics...from me he obviously gets his syrupy sweet temperament. Since I do always have to make it All About ME, it's getting harder and harder to give him questions that aren't too hard but not too easy. If he feels I'm trying to skate by and give him questions in the same number family, like "What's 24 / 6?" and "What's 28 / 7?" or not providing a variety of questions, that charming, syrupy sweet temperament goes Bye Bye and we all suffer the consequences. And suffer we do.